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4. The only point that has been seriously agitated before us is whether a contract satisfying the requirements of Article 299 of the Constitution of India was entered into between M/s Hanuman Oil Mills, the appellant, and the Union of India, the respondent. Before we proceed to examine this question it would be appropriate to read Article 299 of the Constitution of India which lays down as under:- "299. (1) All contracts made in the exercise of the executive power of the Union or of a State shall be expressed to be made by the President or by the Governor of the State as the case may be, and all such contracts and all assurances of property made in the exercise of that power shall be executed on behalf of the President or the Governor by such persons and in such manner as he may direct or authorise."

As already observed by us earlier, in the present case no evidence was led regarding the telegraphic name or address and merely because on the evidence in Chiranji Lal's case it was held that Purfood is the address of the Chief Director of Purchase as representing the President of India, it cannot be held in the present case that the telegraphic message (Ex. R. 5) emanated from the President of India or was signed by a person authorized to do so on behalf of the President of India or that it amounts to complying with the requirements of Article 299 of the Constitution of India. In our view, and we say this with respect the learned single Judge of the Punjab High Court in Chiranji Lal. could not hold that the provisions of Article 299 of the Constitution of India were compiled with merely because the telegraphic message at the end had the word "PURFOOD" printed on it. Indeed as was observed by the Supreme Court in the case of 1967 Mplj 104 (SC), in order to make this telegraphic message one complying with Article 299 of the Constitution it had to be expressed to be made by the President and the telegram had to be executed by such person and in such manner as the President might have authorized Purfood does not amount to expressing the telegram to be in the name of the President of India, nor as there any evidence that the person who signed the telegram had the authority to do so on behalf of the President of India. In the present case, apart from the fact that there is no evidence at all that Shri S.S. Bajaj was an officer competent to sign on behalf of the President of India. The relevant notification or any other general or special order has neither been produced nor proved on the record.

11. Mr. Mehra urged that the subsequent correspondence between the parties placed on the record and duly proved shows that both the parties regarded a concluded contract having come into existence. In support of his contention that subsequent correspondence can be seen to find out whether a binding contract came into existence, he cited two decisions, one of the Calcutta High Court and the other rendered by the Supreme Court.

12. In Damodar Shah v. Union of India, , it was observed by P. C. Mallick, J. that where the existence of a contract is to be found out from correspondence that passed between the parties has to be looked into for determining whether there was a concluded contract. The rule has no application in a case in which the contract has to be evidence by a formal document in compliance with Article 299 of the Constitution. This was also a case in which the question arose whether the contract compiled with the provisions of Article 299 of the Constitution. On the facts of case, the learned Judge had come to the conclusion that the petitioner had accepted the acceptance of tender and the conduct of the petitioners went to show conclusively that the contract evidenced by the petitioner. The existence of the contract was proved by the subsequent correspondence. So, the question that the Court was required to decide was whether a contract came into existence as evidenced by the terms of the acceptance of tender. The court was not concerned with whether the acceptance of tender complying with the requirements of Article 299 of the Constitution had been issued. This case, therefore, does not help the respondent.

15. In this view of the matter, it must be held that no binding contract complying with the provisions of Article 299 of the Constitution of India was proved to have come into existence. If that be so, it follows that no arbitration agreement came into existence between the parties inasmuch as the alleged arbitration agreement is said to have been contained in one of the conditions governing the contract.

16 .An attempt was made to rely on the rules of business framed under Article 77 of the Constitution but we find that those have no relevance to the facts of the present case in which the question is about compliance with Article 299. No rule or order under this provision was brought to our notice.